Escaping the Cutie Box

Plenty has been written on the nature of a cutie mark and its relationship with talent and one's calling in life. But sometimes, you can't help but think, "My word, what a useless talent!" Or worse, "Why, what could your talent even be?"

Attendant to this line of thought, I've found myself rather fascinated with Silver Spoon lately. Her name describes her mark quite adequately: it's a silver spoon. Fine. But what does it mean? If we extrapolate on the character as-presented and the idiomatic nature of the silver spoon metaphor as a condemnation of privileged inheritence, the nature is self-evident, of course: her calling in life is to be a spoiled rich child. What a lousy talent!

Or maybe that's not it at all.

I tend to believe cutie marks are much more open-ended than is generally shown because, in addition to being emblematic, they are iconographic. They're a picture that could have a multitude of interpretations. Or perhaps more boldly: when the definition is so vague, your "talent" is what you make of it. Get creative.

This isn't an uncommon line of thought; it actually has a TVTropes page or three. But the best application I can recall seeing in FIM territory is probably Ditzy Doo in ILurvTrixie's Special Delivery:

"Ponies look at it different ways, say it's my bubbly personality, or simply being lighthearted, or that it refers to the way I can seem to do things so casually, drifting through them." Derpy crossed her arms, nervously rubbing one against the other. "But I think it's for fragility."

"Fragility? For you?"

"No. I can.. influence the 'fragility' of things. Even unusual things like spells. Or cloud stability. Especially when I'm not trying, like when I'm tired, or get too excited, or have too much cider, or.. " Derpy shrugged, trailing off.

Celestia pursed her lips, considering this new line of information. "So you 'broke' the spell?"

Honestly, that's pretty damn cool. And we can only get away with that sort of interpretation because the cutie mark is not a string of text. If they haven't assigned a meaning to it, we're free to invent one.

Of course, even if you have that definition and a well-established character, the devil's in the details. Twilight Sparkle in ClanCrusher's Winds of Change takes Chrysalis to school by reverse engineering changeling magic in the span of a few minutes. Fluttershy in iisaw's The Twilight Enigma understands an airship as though it were a very large animal (a thing sailors do, just not quite so literally). I think I saw Pinkie Pie cast as an expert in logistics at one point, as well (a supply-line is just a really long party).

...Oh right, Silver Spoon! I truth, I'm not sure about her. There was one story where she was a silversmith; certainly an improvement, but I think there must be something a bit more... exploitable? So maybe she has an affinity for spoons and everything resembling them. Scoops, ladles, shovels, backhoes... too much? She might be unusually hardy against disease, as well (silver is somewhat self-sanitising). Immune to lycanthropy and wereponies won't go near her?

...blah, I suppose I haven't escaped the Cutie Box, yet.